Special Teams
by ClaireStar
Summary: Tyreese is left with five children in his care after the prison falls. I'm still working on this one but decided to put it out there for the moment.


Even in an upside-down world, Tyreese had not expected to find himself in charge of five children, including one baby, in the middle of the apocalypse. He wasn't going to give up, though. He'd been a professional athlete, and before that, an Eagle Scout. He could manage this.

His first challenge came quickly: Judith had begun screaming, her fist in her mouth. He tried to see if there was some sort of pacifier in the baby bag the children had brought with them. He found a rattle, but Judith had no interest in it and her wailing became louder. He ransacked the bag further, but as he was doing so, he noticed that Judith had grown silent. A glance at her revealed why; she was happily sucking on the hammer Tyreese used as his primary weapon. She must have grabbed it from his belt while he was looking for a pacifier. He considered taking it from her, but since there were no walkers in sight, he decided he could do without it. She was more of a risk right now than walkers; her cries had echoed through the wooded area, probably for miles.

Unfortunately, Judith's wailing had not gone unnoticed. He spotted about 100 walkers, approaching in layers. They were surrounded. The only place to take shelter was..up. He looked at the pine trees surrounding him and started lifting the children up to the lower branches, urging them to move up higher. The children moved nimbly and were quickly safely out of reach. But how to get Judith up there?

He summoned his old football skills and yelled to Luke, "Son! Can you catch a football?" Luke yelled back, "I prefer European football." _Great._

Ty turned to Molly, the redheaded girl next to Luke. She nodded confidently. Drawing his arm back he threw Judith in a beautiful spiral into Molly's waiting arms. It came to him, unbidden: _You've still got it, old man_. Except that Judith slipped from Molly's hands and the baby found herself nestled in the dense branches of the pine tree. _Fumble_. Well, at least Judith wasn't crying. In fact, she looked pretty happy, in part because she was** STILL CLUTCHING THE HAMMER. **_Uh-oh._

He prepared to climb the tree himself, but the first wave was approaching and he needed to get enough space to climb the tree. _And he didn't have a weapon._ He turned to the baby bag. There was a heavy can of powdered formula, some diapers, some wipes, way too many stuffed animals, and a rattle. He'd have to make do. When the first walker reached him, he kicked it over and smashed its skull with his boot. Meanwhile, though, there were several approaching him, their jaws snapping. He couldn't take on all three at once, so he grabbed a stuffed animal and shoved it into the mouth of the nearest one, then pushed the other two back. He thrust the rattle through the Stuffed Animal Walker's eye socket, and it collapsed to the ground. He pulled the rattle out and turned to the other two. He stuffed a plush rabbit into the nearest one's mouth and kicked it back. Fortunately, the creature was so decayed that when it fell, its head split open like an overripe melon. _A hell melon_, Ty thought. Then he kicked down the third one walker and used his boot to smash its skull. But this one was too fresh and his skull didn't crush, so Ty shoved the rattle into its eye socket and watched it collapse. He tried to pull the rattle out, but it was stuck._ Damn fresh walkers._

He could see the next wave of walkers, so he began climbing the nearest tree, which was the one next to Mika and Lizzie. He climbed quickly, although it was not as easy for him. He nearly lost his footing on a weak branch, which collapsed and broke seconds after he stepped off it to a higher branch. He was trapped now, and they were surrounded. He yelled to Lizzie, "Lizzie, I'll try to draw them away so you all can make a break for it. I just need to figure out the best way to do this._ And catch my breath,_ he thought. Lifting those kids into the trees had taken it out of him. Lizzie nodded that she understood, then she signaled to Mika, Luke and Molly.

After that it was almost a blur. Tyreese watched as the two sisters pulled out their guns, put on silencers, did a quick count of their extra clips, took aim and began methodically taking out the walkers. A branch over, Molly had pulled out a slingshot and was shooting pine cones into walkers' eye sockets with deadly efficacy. Meanwhile, Luke lowered himself to a branch just out of reach of the walkers, and as they got closer he would hang upside down from his knees, stab the nearest walkers, then pull himself up to safety. They had taken out dozens of the walkers in the blink of an eye, and in about 10 minutes, they were all dead. Ty painstakingly lowered himself down from the tree, but the drop was too far and he twisted his ankle. He called to the children. "Can any of you reach Judith?" Mika gave him the thumbs-up sign and grabbed the little girl from her cradle of branches. Unfortunately, during the process, Judith dropped the hammer, which fell on Ty's head. Fortunately, his hat cushioned some of the blow, but he'd still have a goose egg.

_The important thing was that they were all safe_. Even better, he now knew that he had a team of extremely well-trained child soldiers on his team. Mercifully, he did not need their fighting skills after that. They made their way through the woods to one of the safe houses the group had set up in case the prison had fallen, which was about a half mile from where they had fought off the group of walkers. There were a few delays, of course: Mika and Lizzie got into a heated argument about whether the cardigan Mika was wearing was actually her sister's. Tyreese finally broke it up by promising them that they could have a schedule for sweater-wearing; however, he had to revise this plan because Molly also wanted to wear the sweater. Each child had to stop to go to the bathroom several times, even though Ty had asked them all each time if they had to go. Finally, when they were nearing the safe house, he noticed that Luke was missing. A panicked search revealed that Luke had turned back to pick what he thought were berries, but were actually some sort of small animal droppings; fortunately Ty had stopped Luke before he sampled some. It was only when they got to the door that he realized that Luke had somehow lost his shoe at some point. The boy couldn't do without shoes, so the whole group had to retrace Luke's steps to find the shoe, which somehow had been caught in the branches of a tree that none of the children had climbed. It turned out that Luke had seen a squirrel and decided to see if he could throw his shoe and kill it.

It took them three hours before they reached the safe house.

He managed to get the children fed. After that, the kids started to play a board game left in the house. Ty hoped to use this opportunity to relax, but was called to be the referee in a series of disputes about rules and who was sitting where; who should start first; whether they should go clockwise or counterclockwise; and what exactly clockwise and counterclockwise meant. Finally, they finished the game and started the process of getting them to bed, only to find that they all wanted to snuggle next to him. Another series of heated arguments ensued, until finally Tyreese proposed a schedule of snuggling, hoping the children would fall asleep and he wouldn't actually have to enforce the schedule. Instead, though, Ty ended up the center of a puppy pile of children, all of whom seemed to be violent sleep kickers, and with Judith asleep on his stomach. He soon learned that Judith's diaper had its limitations as he felt his shirt becoming soaked. Also, it appeared at least one of the children was a bedwetter, although he couldn't make out who it was in the dark; he just felt moistness pooling near his calves.

This was how Carol found Tyreese, staring at the ceiling unblinkingly, his eyes wide with horror at the growing awareness of what his future would entail, when she arrived at the safe house slightly before dawn.

He looked at her like he couldn't believe his eyes. "Carol? Is that you?"

She smiled and said, "Yes."

Ty said, "I'm so glad you are here..."

Carol cut him off. "Ty, before anything else, I need to tell you something that might make you want me to leave. It's about Karen and David and how they died."

Ty looked at her in shock. "No. Just NO."

Carol said, "It's important, Ty."

He said, with quietly controlled emotion, "Are you going to tell me that you killed Karen and David?"

She said, "Well...I..."

It was his turn to cut her off. "I forgive you. Say no more."

She couldn't believe it. "Are you sure?"

He said, "Yes. I'm sure you had a good reason. Water under the bridge. No harm, no foul."

She said, in a voice choked with emotion, "Thank you."

He nodded and said intensely, "Whatever. You're staying right here. Here's Judith." He thrust the sopping-wet baby into her arms. "See, I trust you."

She smiled gratefully, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears, and set about changing Judith's diaper.

They were both silent for a second while she did that. Ty interrupted, saying, "I actually do have one question."

Carol looked at him, not knowing what to expect. His eyes were so intense, so..._agonized_.

"Do you know the rules of Candyland?"


End file.
